Previously Unreleased Bob Dylan Tracks Showcase a Spontaneous Genius

"Genius" is the most overused word in our language when it comes to writing about rock and roll. Overzealous or star-struck critics routinely lift talented musicians to myth-making levels. But when it comes to explaining Bob Dylan's recordings in 1965 and 1966, "genius" makes the grade. No other word adequately describes Dylan in the studio creating Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited in 1965, then Blonde on Blonde in 1966. Within an 18-month period, Dylan equaled or exceeded The Beatles. He made the rocking Rolling Stones look like teenyboppers.

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Thankfully, Dylan's shrewd manager Jeff Rosen elected to put together the period's most inspired studio outtakes, never-released tunes and in-the-works songs in the 12th installment of the highly durable Dylan "Bootleg Series." The new album is called The Cutting Edge, and the phrase fits. Rosen made an inspired choice, temporarily pushing back the releases of such promising Bootleg Series possibilities as alternatives to Blood on the Tracks and the Rolling Thunder Revue, which bookended Dylan's output in 1975, and his very underrated gospel music from 1979 to 1981. We can wait.

It's compelling to observe the creative process, something that stood out, too, in the recent film Love and Mercy, which showed how Brian Wilson painstakingly crafted the great Beach Boys album Pet Sounds. It is often a challenging, time-consuming enterprise. Take one of my favorites, "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again." As we see on Cutting Edge, the song took shape on the studio. It started out as a sort of shuffle as Al Kooper worked out his organ part.

Dylan worked in stark contrast to a persistent group like The Beatles. As bootlegs from 1968 show, The Beatles had the arrangements completely worked out for the The White Album songs even before they stepped foot in Abbey Road to lay down the tracks. Dylan, on the other hand, is constantly searching for his sound in the studio. No wonder Robbie Robertson, the guitar player on many of these 1965-66 sessions who went on to prominence in The Band, told interviewer Larry Sloman in 1975 that it was crucial for Dylan to work with musicians who were "flexible and fast." By repeatedly playing partial or complete takes, he and his band mates find the tempo. It must've been maddening for his ever-patient producers, Tom Wilson and Bob Johnston. Take "Just Like A Woman" radically altered on the fly. Dylan didn't even have a name settled when he walked up to the mic. On The Cutting Edge, we hear, "Annie, she makes mistakes, just like a woman…"

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There is so much to appreciate and marvel over. One constant on every take is the intensity and inventiveness of Dylan's vocals. Like his band is doing with their instruments, he, too, is searching for a fresh, revolutionary, workable sound. Whether he whispers or wails, he is Leah's in the moment. Occasionally he achieves this result from happy accidents, such as his delight of discovering a police whistle which plays on the "Highway 61" track. Plus, we can appreciate Dylan's fabulous harmonica playing on the assigns for all three albums. He has it to create melodrama (Visions of Johanna), pathos (Just Like A Woman) and resignation (One Of Us Must Know).

"It amazes me that I even continue to make albums," Dylan told WNEW-FM disc jockey Dave Herman in a 1981 interview. "It's always a miracle of some kind when I make an album because it's so contrary to the way I move. Working in the studio has always been very difficult for me." On The Cutting Edge, we hear it.

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